


Gatherings grand and small

by Kit



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Dragon Age Holiday Cheer, F/M, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Gift Fic, Grief, ridiculous crowd scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 17:26:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3075731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Winterend into First Day on the Hawke estate. Frienship is a quiet thing, until it isn't. Hawke does not have to grieve alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gatherings grand and small

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dakoyone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dakoyone/gifts).



> This is a gift for the wonderful Dakoyone, who prompted: 
> 
>  
> 
> _F!Hawke's first First Day (when people would generally go around checking up on neighbors and family) after Leandra's death. Sibling could be either Bethany or Carver and may or may not still be alive. Pairing: F!Hawke/Fenris_
> 
>  
> 
> I hope this suits, sweet thing!

> When I am dead, my dearest,  
>  Sing so sad songs for me;  
>  Plant thou no roses at my feet,  
>  Nor shady cypress tree.  
>  Be the green grass above me,  
>  with showers and dewdrops wet;  
>  and if thou wilt, remember,  
>  and if thou wilt, forget.
> 
> I shall not see the shadows,  
>  I shall not feel the rain;  
>  I shall not hear the nightingale  
>  sing on, as if in pain:  
>  And dreaming through the twilight  
>  That doth not rise nor set,  
>  Haply I may remember,  
>  and haply may forget.
> 
> _Christina Rossetti_
> 
>  

“So, Blondie,” Varric said into the gloom. “Is this a Warden thing, or just a particularly literal take on the Mage Underground.

“I’m good at escaping, that’s all. Even temporarily.” A pause, and Anders looked back over his shoulder, smile crooked. “Especially temporarily.”

What this was, Bethany thought, was a terrible idea. Bethany felt the thought in every step she made, water and dust trickling down her back by turns as Anders led her through corridor and tunnel and alarming, splintered ruins beneath the city. Varric helped. He was warmth at her back, his hand finding hers without comment when tunnels narrowed or Anders stopped at a branching path, his face too abstracted for anyone who was meant to have a sense of direction.

“Thank you for this,” Bethany managed. “I didn’t—”

“For you,” Varric said, shifting Bianca as a spider skittered in the distance, “Anything. And Hawke will be delighted.”

***

“Isabela,” Merrill said, hooking her arm through her friend’s with a yawn, “What do pirates do for Wintersend?”

“Drink, mostly.” Isabela grinned, dropping a kiss to Merrill’s temple. “That and kiss people.”

“Isn’t that what you do every day?”

“Well,” Isabela sniffed. “What about the Dalish?”

“Frolic,” Merrill said. “More. Obviously.”

“Obviously.”

Merrill sighed as they walked the grey, slow-filling streets, feeling the rise into Hightown beneath her feet.

“It’s a Tevinter calandar, you know. Wintersend. We don’t follow it. We keep out of all the crowds. There are always rather a lot of crowds.”

“Not at sea, kitten,” Isabela said, with a small, shivery sort of groan that told Merrill that sadness lurked in the corners of the conversation. “Oh, it’s a piss-up below decks and there’s always  _someone_ who thinks they know  _Maker Should Know Better_  on the fiddle, and it’s anyone’s luck when they do, but take just a few steps up and  _out_  and—ah, bugger it.” She shook her head, and Merrill reached up to set her scarf back to rights.

“Isabela?”

“I’m getting maudlin,” Isabela said. “And there aren’t enough people to laugh me out of it. Let’s go visiting, kitten.”

***

Hawke saw Leandra in window smudges and dust. She was a shadow-flick in the main doorway, just by the fire. The caught breath that Hawke still felt when she walked into the house late and weary and covered in muck, until memory caught up with her eyesight, and Bodhan squeezed her arm in sympathy as he took her bloody coat.

Child apologies hurt when they’re swallowed.

“You are well?”

Hawke blinked.

Fenris did not look at ease by her fireplace. His hand was curled over the lintel, pressed into the stone and white at every joint. There was a book in his other hand, the binding raw and edges thick with use.

“Are  _you_? Is there—”

“—The first year,” he said, words clipped and quick. “Is hard, I think. You should not be alone.” More shifting, the book almost dropping from long, near-nervless fingers before he swore, and caught it up. “Unless you want to be.”

“I—”

“This space has memories,” Fenris said, sighing. “I’d offer mine, but there’s a draft. Also corpses.” He blinked, slow, and Hawke felt a giggle rise up from somewhere sharp and loose in her chest. She swallowed it.

“Corpses,” she said, “Would probably not be ideal.”

“ _Venhidis_ ,” Fenris muttered, “That sounded—”

“Much better in your head?”

“I will go,” Fenris said. “I am—”

“—an  _ass_. Don’t you dare.” Hawke stepped forward. She did not touch him, but drew close enough that her space, if she was being whimsical, shifted against his.

 _Sometimes_ , Hawke thought, I like  _whimsy_.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “What’s the book?”

“One of Sebastian’s,” Fenris said, eyes dropping from her face to the battered object in his hand. “Starkhaven children stories are terrifying. But I thought they might be distracting. I thought I might—”

Hawke swallowed, letting herself smirk. She kept it crooked, kept it bright, imagining Isabela’s ease and using the smile to help it stick. Easier than waiting. “Entertain me?”

“Read to you,” Fenris said.

***

Aveline smiled at the sight of Isabela and Merrill outside the Hawke estate. They had not seen her yet, the Guardman’s tread not giving her away while Merrill talked in Isabela’s ear, rhythm more than words floating back to her in the night.

“You see,” she said, hand fast around Donnic’s. “Our friends are good people.”

“Are you sure you want Isabela hearing that?” Donnic’s lips were warm against her hair.

“She doesn’t need to hear it,” Aveline said, rueful. “And she’ll be the first to tell you so. Come on, love.”

Isabela laughed as they approached the door, all teeth and charm (”look at  _you_ , out of uniform and with your upstanding young man,”) as Aveline flushed, setting one hand to the door.

***

“…we had a tunnel,” Bethany said. “From Darktown, to our cellar?”

“And I had one from Darktown to the Gallows,” Anders said, grinning and brushing dust from his cheek. “Convenient, that.”

“How did you find out?”

“I skulked.”

“That’s…a pretty ridiculous image.” Bethany stretched. “You know, I  _keep_  finding ridiculous things.”

“In this company,” Varric said, watching Anders fasten the cellar hatch behind them, “That’s not hard.”

“No,” Bethany said. “What I mean is, I…I should be crying. A lot. I was. I probably shall tomorrow. But  _this_  is—” she shook her head. “I’ve missed you, and you’re all reckless fools.”

“Hawke’s all the family some of us want to own to, Sunshine,” Varric said. “And you’re part of that.” He grinned, then. A quick, sly-slide of a smile that Bethany nearly missed. “And I’d say knowing how to get out of the Gallows place is a First Day gift all on its own, don’t you think?”

Bethany laughed, shoulders shaking as it spilled out between her fingers. “I’ve _missed_  you,” she said. “The mad, merry lot of you.”

***

They did not touch, not quite.

They were in the library, Hawke with knees drawn up over a chair, a mix of sprawled and bent that made her look as if she was fashioned from wire and luck, Fenris sat on an opposite chair, the book held close in one hand as he let one word fall after the other, recounting a story about a dragon, a giant stone, and three angry witches that made both of them smile, though Fenris’s smile was trapped behind the syllables he needed to shape. They were silly stories, nothing that he remembered and nothing Hawke had ever had, or so she said. Her own childhood fashioned by Ferelden tales of Andraste’s mabari (”Truly?”) and angry Kings.

Sometimes, when Fenris looked up, Hawke was watching his face.

It was unsettling.

“Sorry, what?”

“You are staring.”

Hawke groaned. “Hard to help, since you insist on being wonderful.”

“I do no s—”

“Mother,” Hawke said, blinking hard and a ragged edge to her voice that made him wince. “Loved being read to. I’m afraid this is all a bit perfect.”

Someone started to clap.

“We can add to that,” Varric said, stepping into the library with an anxious Bodhaan at his elbow, and a grinning Merrill and Isabela in his wake.

Hawke untangled herself from her chair. It was, she thought, completely ridiculous that she wanted to blush. Weep and laugh and blush, especially when Isabela sauntered forward and kissed her cheek. “What is this?”

“Your friends,” said Aveline, low and steady.

“Such as as we are,” said Anders, filling the space and grinning over Aveline’s shoulder. “Time of year, and all that.”

“I  _think_ ,” said one last voice, while Hawke’s hands flew to her face and she nearly fell over her own feet in an attempt to meet it, “That this makes me, ‘all that’. What do you think, sister?”

Bethany Hawke smiled, and held out her arms.

Her big sister started to weep.


End file.
